Beautiful Berlin (part 2)

There’s something wonderful about the toilet walls of Berlin bars. Not for our Teutonic friends barely legible marker pen scratchings about the size of someone’s genitals or errant phone numbers promising untold sexual pleasures. Maybe it’s that Berliners are all too acutely aware of history, or maybe it’s just a place where Berlin men take the time out a toilet break affords and reflect on the state of the world. Either way, it's always worth having a good look around the walls and ceiling as you're spending a pen- spending a cent in a Berlin bar's public toilet.

Having said that, I did have some difficulty with public lavs in Germany. The confusion lies in the names, you see: Herron (Gents), and Damen (Ladies). Here's the problem: Herron contains the word ‘Her’, and Damen contains the word ‘men’. Now, how is my booze-addled brain to cope with that as I lurched towards the toilets at some ungodly time in the evening/morning?

Anyway, here are a few of my favourites found at various times on the walls of Herron across Berlin. 

(See here for Beautiful Berlin, Part 1)

I really miss Berlin. See you soon, old friend.

If for no other reason...

'They put a helmet on your head and a rifle in your hands and send you off to kill your brother in his native land, and I say LAY YOUR WEAPONS DOWN.'

'We can't go on this way, oh no! It's really up to us now, comrades. We can make it happen...Gotta put an end to war today!'

  

                             

Of course. And why wouldn't you have pictures of Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg going to the toilet, on the doors of your toilets?

'YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL.'

'Not so bad yerself.''

Love that someone actually replied, too. Just a great big love-in in this toilet.

'Give DARKNESS no chance.'

This reminds me of my old Hackney Green Party comrade who was seen on TV during the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit using his bike as a shield/weapon as the Danish police were laying into protesters.

'The AfD is Racist.'

(AfD: Alternative for Deutschland - basically the German version of UKIP, only these bozos don't bother to cloak their latent racism.)

This wasn't a toilet wall, but including here in keeping with the spirit. Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg is the radical leftwing area of Berlin. The Greens basically run the show, representing this area in the Berlin Parliament.

'Nazis, you piss off! This is our quarter!'

'Football is when twenty-two men get behind a ball, and at the end, the Germans always win', Gary Lineker. Ahem...

Again, not from a toilet wall, but I love this, spotted in Dresden, and a lovely way to finish this post.

For more, see here for Beautiful Berlin, Part 1

Rock and roll Jesus

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

John Lennon killed religion for me. In truth, he saved me the bother of doing it myself. I had been sent to a Church of England primary school, a midweek church group and church-run Sunday school, maybe hoping for the best. But when Dad leant in conspiratorially one teenage day and handed over Lennon's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Lennon's first post-Beatles solo album, the world I had had built for me by other people – parents, school, church – crumbled. Like my own acerbic Toto, Lennon pulled back the curtain, but instead of a small man pulling levers, there was nothing. The destruction of religion left a hole where my soul should have been.

Raised on a baby boomer rock and roll diet, music was already as much a part of me as my parents' DNA. I don't remember, for example, hearing Sgt Pepper's for the first time; as much as I've just always known that the sky is blue, I’ve just always known that she's leaving home to meet a man from the motor trade, how many holes it takes to fill the House of Lords, and, of course, Henry the horse dances the waltz.

John Lennon turned me into a teenage sceptic. He created me by tearing me down, and he left my soul on fire, embers burning in the rubble. Lennon took a sledgehammer to the walls, but then stepped aside as something new, all brooding, righteous contempt, swaggered in with petrol canisters. The shock of the new arrived at the perfect time for a teenage boy searching dark corners for a music, a culture, a communion of his own.

Britpop, gyrating, menacing, often androgynous, fun, a mischievous nod to the peerless paternal music collection, a celebratory antidote to the dominant US grunge, a particularly miserable stodge of Americana that, as Stephen Patrick sang, gladiola swaying languidly from his jeans' back pocket, said nothing to me about my life. I watched ‘The Word’ in 1994, open-mouthed, as the Grim Brothers, standing wilfully stock-still, glaring straight at me down the East Lancs Road and directly into my wide eyes, created a new wall of noise like nothing I had ever heard before, and thought, 'So THIS is what music sounds like.' Definitely Maybe made us feel 10 feet tall: we might belong in the gutter, but hang on long enough and we'll flow into the wide open sea.

At the same time as Oasis were stamping me with a new take-no-prisoners attitude, the Boo Radleys were writing the manifesto. Martin Carr’s devastating declaration on Four Saints - I believe in love - meant to me an Eden more than a childhood of Bible stories and moralistic teachings. Laugh if you must, he dares us, laugh if you must. I don't care. I just don't care: a warning to an impressionable teenage boy building his moral kaleidoscope; a warning to mind the shrieking cynics and to kick back against the pricks that will surely come to shake his faith; an ideology with which to start rebuilding. Then, a call-to-arms, in Find the Answer Within. He really means it, too, looking us straight in the eye, daring us to disobey: The world is at your feet. Try and make something happen. A get-your-stupid-arse-out-of-bed-and-do-something-spectacular shotgun blast that shook a working class boy from Merseyside into full self-consciousness; sitting on the banks of the Mersey in the dull dawn light, with every repeated Walkman play the Boo Radleys rebuilding in their own image what John Lennon tore down, watching cargo ships steam past towards the Irish sea and into the waiting world and everything in it, everything in it.

There was no room for God here, nor room for doubt or loss of nerve. Over time, relationships let me down, books and films delivered hollow promises, a succession of jobs left me adrift. Decisions were made, without apology, based simply on wether the outcome would hold The Jam’s voraciously capitalist Burning Sky at bay, or whether The Libertines would give their blessings. No heavenly influence could ever hold rank more than when Hope of the States demanded Stand up, be counted, no-one’s buying me, and Keep your friends close; your enemies won't matter in the end. In the paranoia and fury of the 2003 Iraq War, Conor Oberst’s quiet pacifist denunciation in There’s boys playing guns in the street, one's pointing his tree branch at me, so I put my hands up, say 'enough is enough', if you walk away I'll walk away, and Matt Bellamy pleading It’s time we saw a miracle was everything I needed to know about where right and wrong lay. I became an committed atheist searching for redemption in God’s kingdom, but the closest I’ll ever get to heaven now is by injecting Spiritualized into my broken heart and letting their angels take me.

And while my Dad had Beatles and the Stones and Paul Simon, Neil Young is mine, reclaimed and remoulded as a sage for our terrifying new world, a messenger from previous turmoil, whispering the wisdom of Zues in our ear, bullwhip lashes on his back still weeping. Sure, tattoo Hey hey, my my onto my skin for cavalier in approach and courage in dark times, but the scripture for the age is tattooed into the fabric of the new world: I join the multitudes. I raise my hand in peace. I never bow to the laws of the thought police. I take a holy vow to never kill again.

And now. Pushing 40. The kaleidoscope still turns, each year erupting into new cosmic colours. The Boos and the rest still unconsciously influence every decision. The scepticism Lennon taught me still keeps me on the straight and the narrow. But...but...The fires fuelled by rock and roll still burn with a furious intensity but, in these older, greyer days, choices taken are now more often in wisdom and not anymore in furious righteousness, and when that happens I struggle to ignore the idealistic disappointment from down the decades. But, then, as John said, life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. 

Amen to that, Brother.

Waving flags: the end of the UK?

Could a vote to Leave the European Union on June 23rd spell the end of the UK?

It's a very real potential consequence that doesn't seem to be discussed much.

The UK will vote as one country whether to leave the EU, but the UK isn't one country. What English people decide to do might be different from what the Scots or Welsh decide. 

Hypothetical situation 1

Let's say England votes overwhelmingly to Leave the EU (which is entirely possible), but Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all vote to Remain. 

But, because England is the more overwhelmingly populous country, her votes to Leave outnumbers the combined Remain votes from the latter three countries? So the entire UK leaves the EU, directly against the decision of the people of 3 of the 4 countries that make up the UK.

What then?

There is certainly a democratic deficit here, and the question really is whether this deficit might spark a constitutional crisis that could force the breaking up of the United Kingdom.

Should the people of, say, Wales, be forced to Leave the EU when the Welsh people overwhelmingly vote to Remain? Should the Scots or people of Northern Ireland?

And this hypothetical situation is a distinct possibility. Consistent polling shows that by a significant amount the people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will vote to Remain, while the UK vote as a whole is polling at roughly even.

If this very possible hypothesis is realised, I see another Scottish independence referendum around the corner, but this time with a massive YES vote. And with it, moves to speed up the devolution of an independent Wales. 

Northern Ireland would be more complicated (isn't it

always?), although Sinn Féin is justifiably demanding a referendum in NI on

Ireland reunification if the UK Leaves and NI votes to Remain. Which I would say is fair enough - do the people of NI want to remain with England outside of the EU, or reunify with Ireland and remain in the EU?

That would be an interesting discussion.

Now, an argument against this situation occurring would be that at

General Elections, Scotland and Wales would rather cut off their collective hands than ever vote Tory, but under a Tory Government they live due to accepting the results of the full UK vote, at the 2015 elections led almost entirely by (largely southern) English votes. 

True. And being ruled by a Tory Government that they didn't vote for is one of the main arguments that justifies Scotland's claim to independence.

But at least people in those non-Tory voting countries and regions can be represented by an MP and council of their own choosing. Leaving the EU is all or nothing; we're either all in, or we're all out.

Hypothetical situation 2

Or, another hypothetical? What if England narrowly votes to Leave, but the Remain votes from the Scotland, Wales and NI are so numerous that they dwarf the English Leave votes. So the UK remains a member of the EU, but the largest country in the UK voted to leave. What then? Stronger and maybe more justified calls for an independent English Parliament, contributing still to a further breakup of UK union? 

If the UK does vote to Leave, it's difficult to see how the union will stay together.

The irony here, of course, is that many of the goons that campaigned so hard for Scotland to reject independence and maintain the United Kingdom are, by campaigning so vociferously for the UK to leave the EU, the very same people that could smash the whole thing up.

Beautiful Berlin (part 1)

Part 1 of a probably regular series of just lovely things I've seen and taken a picture of in Berlin, from skylines to street art to interesting things found in bar toilets. And everything in between. Enjoy.

A day or two after Bowie returned to whatever fabulous planet he came from, the road where Bowie lived during his 3 year stay here was renamed. During his time here, he made 3 remarkable albums:  Low (1977), Heroes (1977), and Lodger (1979). 

My favourite story about Bowie's time in Berlin is about the inspiration behind those Heroes lyrics. The couple who 'kissed by the wall'  was Tony Visconti, his producer at the time, and backup singer Antonia Maass, who would kiss by the Berlin wall, not far from one of the the gun turrets ('the guns shot over our head'), in front of Bowie as he looked out of the Hansa Studio window during a smoke break.

Dear Rosa was executed by order of the ruling German social democrats in January 1919. Tools.

Her last known words are: '“Order prevails in Berlin!” You foolish lackeys! Your “order” is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will “rise up again, clashing its weapons,” and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!'

Yep. My English language college was on this very road.

You do get a better class of graffiti on the toilet walls in Berlin.

Spotted at a music festival last September when Merkel was starting to open up the German builders to Syrian refugees.

Wonderful murals on the wall of my local cafe. l-r John Lennon, Edward Snowden, Bob Marley (I think), not sure who that is, Amy Winehouse, and Malcolm X.

A flyer from Die Linke, the 'Left' party. Basically says 'Refugees welcome! Nazis out!' 

Interestingly, the Left party have their roots in the ruling party in the old Soviet East Germany. When the Wall came down, they regrouped, brought more lefty groups into a coalition, and relaunched. 

Spotted this very random but extraordinary scene in the Berlin suburbs on a train ride into the city. A big peace sign there, and to the left is a store mannequin wearing a Team Edward t-shirt. As in, Edward Snowden. Not bloody Twilight.

Who's In Control?

June 23^rd. 

It ain't so far away, now. The EU referendum approaches, and from here it looks very much like nobody in Britain is pulling their fingers out to make the case for the UK staying in the EU.

They (the Out campaign) have Boris, Gove and Duncan-Smith, Farage, George Galloway - like or loathe them, high-profile and influential politicians one and all - most of the Tory front and back bench, and most of the rabid rightwing press. Bear this in mind, people voting for Brexit: these lunatics and sycophants are the unbearable people you are standing with!

And those main players campaigning for Britain to remain? Cameron and Osbourne. The two politicians front centre of the campaign to remain are right now about as popular as an offshore tax advisor.

Who else? Corbyn and Labour – the party and the leader that could make such a difference here? Warm but generally disinterested support at best, so much so that a pretty huge 40% of people polled have no idea where Corbyn stands on the issue. In fact, Corbyn has previously been a pretty ardent Eurosceptic, having voted against EC membership in the 1975 referendum, the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 and the Lisbon Treaty in 2008. Labour are officially in favour of staying, but can we expect the party to grow a backbone and put their collective shoulder to the Remain campaign. I certainly hope so, but, sadly, I suspect not.

Nobody will rightly trust the Lib Dems for a long, long time, and by bringing their toxic brand to the Remain campaign will likely damage it in much the way their support poisoned the Yes campaign in the 2011 AV referendum. And while the Greens are the only UK Parliamentary party unashamedly making the case to remain, their influence is limited.

Leaving the EU would be a disaster for the UK. But because an utter lack of support for the Remain campaign by non-odious politicians, my fear is that we are about to sleepwalk through the EXIT door in a cloud of 'meh'.

The people that want us out are ferocious in their decision and belief, and will march determinedly in unison to the voting booth in June. But those who want us to remain, or who are generally happy with the status quo, are those least likely to vote. With the country seized by a collective apathy, turnout is unlikely to be particularly high at the referendum. Which would mean that the UK could be about to catastrophically leave the EU on the say of a tiny minority of misinformed, lied to, or swivel-eyed Tory and UKIP voters.

Daily Mail readers, basically.

So, Britain, is this who you want deciding our future? Ridiculous, isn't it? For goodness sake, sort it out, yeah?